London and other major British cities may be on the cusp of a drug epidemic as strong opioids begin to flood the global market, a top policing chief has warned.

Donna Jones has claimed that the UK may follow in the dark footsteps of San Francisco and other US cities that are gripped by a catastrophic opioid crisis.

The supply of heroin is in flux, as the Taliban’s outlawing of poppy farming has seen a 90 per cent reduction in exports from Afghanistan – the world’s largest producer of the drug.

As a result, Chinese gangs have stepped in to fill the void, providing synthetic opioids which are as much as 300 times stronger than street heroin, according to Ms Jones.

In a stark alert, she said it was “inevitable” that the UK’s biggest cities would see a spike in deaths similar to that in the US, as more synthetic drugs, like nitazene, enter the country.

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M Jones, who chairs the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, said that the rapid decline of the Afghan heroin trade will enable alternative suppliers to claim their share of the market.

She said: “That will completely dry up the heroin supply down to Africa and up through Europe over the next 12 months, which means the Chinese synthetic opioid market is going to explode.

“It’s already happening in America, and heroin addicts in America are dying in their plenty because synthetic opioids like fentanyl are literally 50 times stronger than street heroin. And it is so tragic.”

She went on: “The Chinese gangs have been keeping a close eye on the supply of heroin around the world and have clearly seen an opportunity to exploit the market with a massive explosion in synthetic opioids”.

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Drug poisoning death in England and Wales are already at the highest they’ve ever been in the 30 years that they’ve been being recorded, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published on Tuesday.

Of the 4,907 drug-linked deaths last year, just under half have been attributed to opiates.

According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), there have been 54 deaths linked to street drugs that are six times more powerful than fentanyl in the past six months. There are 40 more cases awaiting test results.

In October, there were 11 arrests in Waltham Forest, northeast London, after 150,000 nitazene tablets were recovered from a “sophisticated factory”.

Det Supt Helen Rance, heading up the investigation, said: “Synthetic opioids have been detected in batches of heroin found in London and across the UK. They substantially raise the risk of incredibly serious harm to the user, and are believed to be linked to a number of deaths.”

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